Remote – Pre-Alpha trailer launched from Ice Beam Games

Tom Goodchild is the director and founder of Ice Beam Games, he has over 14 years experience in the games industry and has worked at some of the largest video game studios in the UK, including Codemasters, Climax and Free Radical Design. He has been a member of Fleet Collective for the over a year now and has just released the pre-alpha trailer of his latest game Remote. Here’s Tom to tell you more.

“For the last year, I’ve been working at Ice BEAM on my first video game REMOTE. The game was originally conceived as a squad based tactical shooter and the development was started in Unity on a train while on a daily commute to Birmingham. After months of iteration and playtesting the game slowly morphed and changed over into the game we have today; where you play a droid that can hack and take control of other enemy robots. Check out my first trailer on youtube.com.

It’s been a formidable process going working with a large group of developers, each having their own domains and skillsets that they bring to the game, to basically having to do everything myself. I’ve had to learn new programming languages, animate characters, create artificial intelligence logic, edit game trailers and write press releases amongst many other things. Its been such a daunting but also extremely rewarding experience that has made me a much stronger game developer. Its provided much needed perspective (and respect) to the all development disciplines I had previously taken for granted.

The collaborative atmosphere and friendly reception I got from Fleet has been a great support during this painful transition period. Although most come from a different background than video games, this creative drive we all share has helped show me the way.

The game is still in a prototype phase and I think there is another year left of development. I’ve started some tentative steps towards talking to publishers and the press about the game and am still very much learning that side of the business. Hopefully I’ll have some more good news about the game soon, including what platforms it will be on and a firmer release date.

Until then, this is Tom Goodchild, director of Ice BEAM, signing off.”